


Always

by Totipalmate (orphan_account)



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-18
Updated: 2016-05-18
Packaged: 2018-06-09 07:10:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,214
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6894979
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/Totipalmate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p></p><div>
  <p> </p>
  <p>    <i>“B’cause this is our story,” Garnet explained, her eyes going soft. “All of it, th’ good an’ th’ bad, it’s ours, Pearl."</i><br/></p>
</div>
            </blockquote>





	Always

“I’ve always loved you,” Pearl said one night, when the new moon left a gap in the nighttime sky.

 

“I don’t think that’s true,” Garnet replied, in an emotionless cantor. Together, they peered out over the ocean from the temple’s crown, perched on the giant stone replica of Pearl’s gem. Hundreds of years of rain and the unyielding sea breeze had polished it to a fine grain. Pearl reached for Garnet’s hand, and Garnet allowed it to happen, bland expression unwavering as the former servant’s fingertips made contact with her stone. Pearl wondered if she felt anything at all as she rested her temple on Garnet’s shoulder.

 

“It is,” she insisted, tracing the outer edge of the triangular table facet. When Garnet’s fingers twitched, she was reminded of her duplicity and of the other entity dwelling within the same stone. Garnet’s entire existence was as secure or as tenuous as the relationship of other people, and the uncertainty and the lack of control terrified Pearl. “You were...so beautiful,” she elaborated. “Like nothing I had ever seen.”

 

“It loses its nov’lty,” Garnet reminded, looking down, past her nose, at the crumbling effigy of a much more fantastic fusion upon which they sat. “Besides...y’ tried t’ d’stroy me.”

 

“Oh,” Pearl mouthed, flinching. Her eyes glazed over as she considered the distant memory of Garnet, much younger and much more pure, peering up the length of her sword. It made her chest tight. “Destroy is...a strong word.”

 

“So is ‘love’,” Garnet murmured, more softly. She dug the toe of her boot into a crack in the stone. “I don’t know that we appr’ciate y’ throwin’ it aroun’, Pearl.”

 

“Don’t do that,” Pearl reprimanded, stomach lurching at the dissonance. “It sounds like you’re falling apart, when you talk that way.”

 

“Maybe I am,” Garnet whispered. “Y’ start talkin’ like that, and I don’t feel right, anymore.”

 

“You don’t mean that,” Pearl insisted.

 

“I do.”

 

Silence fell over them. Pearl glanced down at the hand clutched inside her own, and held tighter to it.

 

“I’ve always loved you,” she repeated, in desperation. Garnet shook her head.

 

“No,” the fusion replied, solemnly. “Y’ haven’t.”

 

“How do you know?” She demanded, woefully.

 

“B’cause I’ve always lov’d y’,” Garnet whispered. “An’ I spent a long time, waitin’ for you t’ love me back.”

 

Delicately, she pulled her hand free from Pearl’s grasp, and turned it palm up to look at the gemstone embedded in it. She felt a twinge of giddiness at the sight of it, as though something deep inside of her had an unquenchable fondness for everything it held. A wry smile, which Pearl couldn’t decipher, twisted across her features as she considered the irony of being jealous of herself. Pearl reached up with both hands, layering one over Garnet’s wrist and the other under her knuckles. She gave the gemstone a wide berth, afraid of treading on a moment of introspection that she, as a singular gem, could never fully understand.

 

“What makes you think...I didn’t love you, back then?” Pearl questioned, earnest and gentle. Garnet closed her fist, and Pearl encapsulated it between her palms.

 

“Maybe y’ did,” Garnet conceded, uncertainly. She seemed, quite suddenly, tired. “But y’ loved her, more.”

 

Pearl tensed, and then withered, her narrow shoulders hunching as if to fend off a blow.

 

“Didn’t you?” She pressed. “Didn’t we all?”

 

Her tone was complex; plaintive and defensive and accusing. Garnet bowed her head, feeling as though there was no right answer. Pearl was blindly loyal to the legacy of Rose Quartz, and Garnet couldn’t even criticize the extremes to which she took her adulation; it was, most literally, what Pearl was made to do.

 

“No,” she admitted. She waited for Pearl to disengage at the revelation, but Pearl simply lowered her hands, still gingerly clutching Garnet’s fist, into her lap. With her thumb, she picked at Garnet’s dark skin, in the same manner as a child might fidget, and it made Garnet’s heart ache.

 

“Rose was wonderf’l,” Garnet elaborated. She shifted her weight, and leaned against Pearl’s tiny frame. Pearl pushed back, nestling into the crook of her neck. “I r’spected ‘er, an’ I lov’d her, Pearl. But...she wasn’t th’ reas’n I joined th’ Cryst’l Gems.”

 

“I’m just a Pearl,” came the protest, as Pearl tried to refute the implication. Garnet jostled her firmly with her elbow; it was a phrase she heard far too often and sorely loathed. With her free hand, she removed her visor and set it aside; when Pearl looked up at her in curiosity, Garnet pressed her lips to the cool nacre of her gem.

 

“You were th’ first gem I eva’ knew,” she rasped, against iridescent layers of calcium carbonate. “You were beatif’l an’ terrifyin’, and I wanted t’ go with you, whereva’ y’ went.”

 

“I had always thought...you were everything you needed,” Pearl confided. “What place is there in you, for me?”

 

“You know bett’r ‘an that,” Garnet admonished, cupping her jaw. “We’re good togetha’. We always ‘ave been.”

 

“We used to be,” Pearl corrected, brows knitting. She released Garnet’s hand, seizing her around the waist with both arms. “I’ve hurt you.”

 

“You have,” Garnet affirmed. “More’n y’ realize, Pearl.”

 

Air escaped Pearl, shaky and miserable. On the verge of tears, she turned her head away. Garnet refused to abide this; she grasped Pearl by the chin, and forced her to look at her.

 

“I love you,” she said, with great firmness. “Y’ couldn’t ‘urt me like y’ do, if I didn’t.”

 

“Is it worth it?” Pearl asked.

 

“Of course it is,” Garnet replied. “I’m ‘ere, aren’t I?”

 

Glassy eyed, Pearl stared searchingly back at the fusion. She was, it seemed, always screwing up. She didn’t know how to be her own person, and she didn’t know how to restrain her desperate need for validation. She had tired of herself long ago, and would have expected anyone else to have done so as well, but Garnet endured, with temperance and forgiveness. Pearl was unworthy.

 

“How can we be- like you?” Pearl wondered, aloud.

 

“Like me?” Garnet questioned, in fleeting confusion. Then, there was realization. “Oh. Like us.”

 

There was a pause, in which Garnet considered the question. Eventually, she shook her head.

 

“We--you an’ I--will never be like...us,” she chewed, her consciousness expanding and contracting; facilitating everyone she was. “An’ I wouldn’t want us t’ be, anyway.”

 

“But why?” Pearl wailed, softly. “You’re perfect...”

 

“B’cause this is our story,” Garnet explained, her eyes going soft. She cupped Pearl’s cheeks between her palms, smiling gently down at the beleageured gem. “All of it, th’ good an’ th’ bad, it’s ours, Pearl. I don’t want t’ live their story ova’ again. I’ve done it already.”

 

“But theirs is good,” Pearl reasoned.

 

“So’s ours,” Garnet challenged. “Maybe betta’.”

 

“That seems...unlikely,” Pearl pouted. She released Garnet’s waist, layering her hands over Garnet’s knuckles. The sharp angles of her gems cut into her cheeks, but she didn’t mind. Garnet’s smile broadened.

 

“Y’ ‘aven’t seen the ending, yet,” she whispered. Pearl opened her mouth to speak, but never got the chance; with the breeze picking up around them, and the edges of the horizon growing pale with the imminent sunrise, Garnet kissed her.

**Author's Note:**

>   
>  I was depressed last night, and wrote garbage.   
> 


End file.
